Hooking 1520 to external monitor at high quality?

I was sure about purchasing an hp dv6500t notebook for college, but now with the 1520, I have my doubts. I won a 22" Samsung monitor and was hoping to use my notebook simply as a desktop replacement. However, the 1520 lacks an HDMI port.. is there any way/available peripheral that can allow me to connect to the monitor at resolutions higher than VGA?

 

The HD15 port that is the standard analog connector will go to whatever resolution the monitor is capable of same as DVI or HDMI. It's just more prone to interference since it's analog signalling. However if you have any decent cable, probably even the cables that came with your monitor, it'll be fine.

 

I hope they add HDMI in a few months. Microsoft did the same thing with the XBOX 360. They released the new Elite model which added HDMI to address some complaints. If Dell is going to offer Blu Ray, which I want to get, I'd like to see that feature added. Say for example if I hooked up my laptop to an HDTV in a hotel room.

 

vga to an lcd monitor looks crappier (ie grainier from my personal exp)

defininatly noticeable compared to DVI or HDMI

 

Don't confuse resolution with picture quality. You can get quite high resolution out of a VGA connection. (I'm not sure just how high you can go exactly.) HDMI or DVI is for better signal quality, not higher resolution.

There is a resolution called VGA, which is only 640x480, but a VGA connector such as the one on the 1520 can use much higher resolutions than that. So the "VGA" connector is not limited to the resolution called "VGA". Kinda confusing, eh?

 

I have the same problem. I just bought a Dell Ultrasharp 20" display and connected it to my Inspiron 6000. No problem with the resolution but the picture is really crap. I'll pretty much need to buy a new laptop just to use this LCD properly.

Getting a notebook that can handle the resolution is only part of the problem.

I don't know of any laptops from the Lenovo/Dell/HP that support HDMI/DVI, which is a real shame.

I'd love to see a review of the external display quality of the different laptop and graphics options.

 

As mentioned, if you want to use a high res larger monitor or LCD TV, HDMI or at least DVI is a godsend. I have a 20" LCD and using a VGA connection, and I can't stand it, the refresh rate sucks and it makes my eyes hurt after a while.

I'm going to upgrade my notebook to one with at least a DVI or HDMI later on in the year for sure.

 

HP DV2500T & DV6500T both have HDMI out

 

As does the M1330.

There's is definitely a quality difference between the HD-15 (VGA) and DVI or another digital connection.

 

As always Dell made a bad choice by not including HDMI on their Inspirons, otherwise I would've ordered one. I hope they'll include this in the future laptops.

btw with XPS 1330 HDMI & 8400GS might not be powerful enough for 1080p playback.

I've purchased DV2500T at first (w/ 8400GS) and it had choppy HD playback (one of the reasons why they didn't include HD-DVD or BluRay probably), now I got Acer 5920G (w/ 8600GT) and HD is perfect.

 

Then there was something wrong with your HP laptop.

 

For laptops with HDMI/DVI people have suggested
HP DV2500T & DV6500T and M1330.

But none of these are suitable alternatives. Only the dv6500t is 15.4" and it has a max resolution of 1280x800 which is too low for many uses (and quite surprising).

 

ASUS G1s, V1s, dv6500 have HDMI but will be more expensive then the 1520.

 

There was nothing wrong with HP laptop, it was lack of power/memory in graphic card (8400GS) to handle HD. I've dealt with this before on my MC PC (HP Z552) turned out that for ATSC OTA playback required a minimum of 256MB of video ram (shared does not count) and 7600GS or better. Unfortunately, 1330 does not meet that requirement.


Btw, as far as alternatives Acer 5920G has HDMI and works perfectly with my 1080p panel. You can read my mini review for Media Center use in Acer forum.

 

No, PureVideo HD (that the 8400M GS supports) is capable of offloading a significant portion of the processing requirements from the CPU to the GPU. In fact, it has much better performance for HD content than the 7xxx series. I'd be willing to bet your MC PC did not have an 8xxx series capable of PureVideoHD.

 

I would be only happy to see if XPS's 8400GS can handle 1080i ATSC stations then I would pick one up.

 

I plan on testing HD content acceleration between the 8400M GS and a prior generation 7900GTO. I figure the comparison between a T7100 and an E4300 should be fairly close, if not identical.

I'll let you know. I have a feeling the 8400M GS will do better.

 

sounds good